Now, India has the World's Seventh fastest Supercomputer 'SAGA-220'.

Recently, China claimed to be leader in Supercomputing by introducing Tianhe-1A, a supercomputer which has peak performance of 2.566 PFLOPS, powered by 14,336 Intel Xeon CPUs and 7,168 Nvidia Tesla M2050 GPUs with a new interconnect fabric of Chinese origin, situated at National Supercomputing Center, Tianjin, China. How can it's neighbor country can be far behind?

On Monday, 2-May 2011, Indian Space Research Organisation has announced that they has built a supercomputer, which is to be India’s fastest in terms of theoretical peak performance of 220 TeraFLOPS (220 Trillion Floating Point Operations per second).

Now, India has the World's Seventh fastest Supercomputer 'SAGA-220'.

Did you checked out your new Zodiac sign? Ophiuchus is the latest addition

Modern Astronomers welcome Ophiuchus, a new addition to the present 12 Zodiac signs. Ophiuchus is a rarely used astrological sign that is not included in most versions of the Zodiac calendars, also known as 'Serpentarius' with its dates falling between November 29 and December 17.

Ophiuchus was said to be counted between Scorpio and Sagittarius. But it was discarded by the Babylonians because they wanted 12 signs per year.

Taken from the Greek word for 'serpent-bearer', the sign is portrayed by a man grasping the snake that is represented by the constellation Serpens. Ophiuchus was one of the 48 constellations proposed by Ptolemy in the second century. It was earlier known as Serpentarius, a Latin word for serpent-bearer.

Did you checked out your new Zodiac sign? Ophiuchus is the latest addition

Russia soon to re-enter into Space tourism in 2013

With the help Russia's Soyuz space ships, the Virginia-based company, Space Adventures will tour space to it's paying tourists in 2013.

The company is said, three space tourists per year will be able to book seats on Soyuz flights to the International Space Station (ISS).

Russia soon to re-enter into Space tourism in 2013

Engineering students from Chennai, India develops nano satellites, weighs less than 10kgs

A group of 54(51 men and 3 women) engineering students from SRM University, Chennai, designed and developed a 10-kg nano satellite which is aimed to monitor greenhouse gases (GHG), expects, launch off with ISRO's Megatropics G satellite this April by ISRO.

Project named as 'SRMSAT', worked began long back in 2008, developed under the guidance of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).An estimated Rs.1 crore of rupees in invested in this project.

The students from 12 deparments of engineering in the university have been working closely with the ISRO to develop the nano satellite.

Engineering students from Chennai, India develops nano satellites, weighs less than 10kgs

2011 will witness four solar and two lunar eclipses.

(IANS) Four solar and two total moon eclipses will be observed in different parts of the world, including in India, in 2011.

The first solar eclipse will take place Jan 4. It will begin at 06:40 GMT and will be visible from Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa.

2011 will witness four solar and two lunar eclipses.

Over payload may be cause for the failure of GSLV-F06 : Former ISRO scientist

One of the rocket scientist and former employee of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said that "Instability introduced by excessive payload weight was most likely responsible for the failure of an Indian rocket's launch" which was launched on the eve of Christmas day(2010).

The scientist, who came up with this statement has over two decades of experience with rocket motors.

Over payload may be cause for the failure of GSLV-F06 : Former ISRO scientist

NZ military release classified UFO files for the public.

Under freedom of information laws, New Zealand military released hundreds of previously classified reports detailing claims of unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings and alien encounters.

The documents released contains the data collected from 1954 to 2009. These classified files were released after the New Zealand Defence Force removed names and other identifying material.

NZ military release classified UFO files for the public.

India's Sophisticated communication and entertainment satellite gets blasted in mid air after 2nd stage Rocket engine failure[Video]

Prestigious, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), suffered a major setback on cryogenic engine system usage. Isro's Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle(GSLV)-F06 launch vehicle failed to put communication satellite GSAT-5P in orbit after being destroyed in mid-air.

India's Sophisticated communication and entertainment satellite gets blasted in mid air after 2nd stage Rocket engine failure[Video]

Indian lead astromers finds a plants which may be diamond-studded.

Wow........ Astronomers led by Indian American Nikku Madhusudhan, Banaras Hindu University (BHU) alumnus now at Princeton University is said to have discovered a giant planet with an atmosphere and core dominated by carbon, raising the prospect that diamond-studded stars may exist.

He and his colleagues have observed that an extremely hot planet discovered last year has more carbon than oxygen, a feature never observed on a planet until now.

Indian lead astromers finds a plants which may be diamond-studded.

Astronomers claims to have a new planet outside Milky way.

From the telescope located at Chile, Astronomers claim to have discovered the first planet outside from our galaxy.

The planet resembles Jupiter, they say, is part of a solar system which once belonged to a dwarf galaxy.

This dwarf galaxy was in turn devoured by our own galaxy, the Milky Way, according to a team writing in the academic journal Science.

Astronomers claims to have a new planet outside Milky way.

China with its huge space plans, plans to go beyond Venus.

(IANS) China has now set its sight on planet Venus, where it hopes to land a space probe by 2015. A probe to Mars and the country's first moon landing has also been chalked out.

The first unmanned space laboratory, Tiangong-1, will be launched in 2011, after which there would be the first unmanned docking with the Shenzhou-8 spacecraft, Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut to visit space in 2003, was quoted as saying by the People's Daily.

Manned spacecraft Shenzhou-9 and unmanned Shenzhou-10 will be launched in 2012, and by 2020, China will launch its first orbital space station, he said.

Ye Peijian, commander-in-chief of the lunar-probe programme, said an orbit of the moon can be expected by 2020. China may launch its first manned moon landing in 2025, a probe to Mars by 2013 and to Venus by 2015.

China with its huge space plans, plans to go beyond Venus.

Boeing plans to enter Space Tourism.

USA Boeing on Wednesday announced it plan to enter the growing that it was entering the space tourism business which will be big blow for Obama's plan to motivate NASA to concentrate on Space Tourism.

The new business may take off as early as 2015, would most likely launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida to the International Space Station.

Recently, Obama administration has proposed turning over to private companies the business of taking NASA astronauts to orbit, and Boeing and Bigelow Aerospace of Las Vegas won an $18 million contract this year for preliminary development and testing of a capsule that could carry seven passengers.

"We're ready now to start talking to prospective customers," said Eric C. Anderson, co-founder and chairman of Space Adventures, the space tourism company based in Virginia that would market the seats for Boeing.

Boeing plans to enter Space Tourism.

Nasa testing its future Rocket Boosters.

( BBC ) US future giant Rocket boosters intended to power the first stage of flight on Nasa's next rocket has been tested in Utah.

The ATK booster, developed as part of Nasa's Constellation project, is a development of the solid rocket motors used to lift the space shuttle off the launch pad.

President Obama cancelled the Constellation project in February, but there is still a strong chance that the ATK booster could play a part in future Nasa launch vehicles.

Nasa's Alex Priskos said the data gathered from the test was "absolutely excellent", giving "the chamber pressures and the thrust pressures that we were expecting".

Nasa testing its future Rocket Boosters.

Falling Perseids meteor shower will be observed today.

(PTI) Perseids, a prolific meteor shower is associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle, said Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE) Director C B Devgun.

"Around 11.30 PM to 2 AM one can expect a Zenithal Hour Rate (ZHR) of about 100-120 meteor per hour," said N Sri Raghunandan Kumar from Planetary Society of India.

Thus, one can expect one meteor in every two minute, he added.

To watch the meteor shower, one should concentrate towards the northeastern sky as the shooting stars, as they are also called, will be more visible in the direction, Kumar said.

Falling Perseids meteor shower will be observed today.

Russia to start construction of new spaceport

Russia will be investing US $800m (£527m) into a new spaceport in the country's Far East, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has announced.

It is said to aim to ease the dependence on the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan, built during the Soviet-era.

The future cosmodrome will be built near the town of Uglegorsk in the Far Eastern Amur region, close to the border with China.

It is planned to be mostly used for civilian launches and should be operational by 2015.

Russia to start construction of new spaceport

Kickstarter will help Android Phone to take off to Space.

Danny Pier, a 25 year-old self-proclaimed computer nerd who turned to Kickstarter to raise funds to get an Android  smartphone into space. The project is named as 'Astdroid'

Upto now over $2,000 have been pledged to help send the first Android phone to space.

Pier believes that he can outfit a weather ballon with an HTC Evo, and use its camera, transmitter, computing power and GPS technology to track the phone’s journey into space.

Kickstarter will help Android Phone to take off to Space.

German TanDEM-X satellite returns first 3D images

Choppy Indian Ocean waters (yellow) contrast with the calm Baie de Diego (blue)

Germany's new radar satellite, TanDEM-X, has returned its first images.

The spacecraft was launched from Kazakhstan on Monday on a mission to make the most precise 3D map of the Earth's surface.

The pictures demonstrate the platform is in excellent health and ready to team up with the TerraSAR-X satellite launched in 2007.

Together, the pair will trace the variation in height across the globe to a precision of better than two metres.

1.Moscow-Sheremetyevo airport 2.Fields and forests in Ukraine

The new images depict a landscape in Ukraine, the north of Madagascar, and Moscow.

The pictures illustrate neatly the particular specialism of using radar to sense the planet's surface.

German TanDEM-X satellite returns first 3D images

Human on Asteroids by 2025?

Almost 50 years after President Kennedy proposed sending a man to the moon "before this decade is out," Obama has set an equally improbable goal. He has proposed a 2025 date for NASA to land humans on an asteroid, a ball of rock hurtling around the sun.

The moon is 240,000 miles away. A trip to an asteroid would be 5 million miles — at a minimum.

An asteroid trip "would really be our first step as a species outside the Earth-moon system," says planetary scientist Andy Rivkin of the Applied Physics Laboratory. "This would be taking off the training wheels."

Src: [ABCNews]

Human on Asteroids by 2025?

Mini-camera pictures Japan's Ikaros solar sail.

It is the picture that confirms Japan's Ikaros solar sail is fully extended and ready for the next part of its mission.

The image was acquired by a tiny camera ejected from the central hub of Ikaros.

It transmitted the picture back to the central hub of the spacecraft, which then relayed the data many millions of kilometres to Earth.

Ikaros will demonstrate the principle of solar sailing, which has long been touted as a means of moving spacecraft around the Solar System.

Mini-camera pictures Japan's Ikaros solar sail.

Scientists zoom in on infant solar system.

A team led by University of Arizona astronomer Joshua Eisner has observed in unprecedented detail the processes giving rise to stars and planets in nascent solar systems.

The discoveries provide a better understanding of the way hydrogen gas from the protoplanetary disk is incorporated into the star.

They are swirling clouds of gas and dust that feed the growing star in its centre and eventually coalesce into planets and asteroids to form a solar system.

By coupling both Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii with a specifically engineered instrument named ASTRA (Astrometric and phase-Referenced Astronomy), Eisner and his colleagues were able to peer deeply into protoplanetary disks. The big challenge facing Eisner's team lies in obtaining the extremely fine resolution necessary to observe the processes that happen at the boundary between the star and its surrounding disk — 500 light years from earth.

Scientists zoom in on infant solar system.